Betsey Brown (19 page)

Vida entered the kitchen slowly like the simmering of greens and porkchops was escaping. She saw Carrie straighten up to say hello, but paid it no mind. Vida announced to all the children gathered in a circle around Carrie, “I'm going to have to speak to Carrie alone for just a minute, chirren. Why don't you go outside and play?”

“Right now, Grandma,” Margot responded, her eyes big and bout to tear.

“Are you going to say Carrie caint stay with us anymore?” an alarmed Betsey asked.

“No, chirren, don't you worry bout anything like that. I am just going to have a few words with Carrie, that's all. Now will you all excuse us for just a few minutes.”

Vida stood quite calmly in the midst of all her grandchildren running for the back yard. All except Betsey, who hid on the back steps, listening.

“Now Carrie, what you do on your days off is your very own
private business, but entertainin gentlemen callers when you're 'sposed to be lookin after my grandchildren is not acceptable behavior. Now if you want Mr. Jeff to come callin, you'll have to do it when you're not here. If I catch you again, I'll have to tell Dr. Brown. And you know he won't stand for any foolishness around his chirren.”

Vida felt she'd been very fair, more than fair. She could have not consulted with Carrie at all and just waited for Greer, to tell him all about the whiskey and Mr. Jeff lingerin in the back bushes like a snake. Yet that's not what she'd done. Vida patted her heart and thought on her Frank, who was the last one to give her flowers so long ago. The melody of her romance waltzed through her soul:
Frank and I would get together, when the music got ta playin . . . once I went to a roadhouse and danced on a dime . . . me and that handsome Frank of mine.

Betsey watched Vida flow up the stairs as if she'd been transformed from a vengeful witch to the good fairy. Betsey crept into the kitchen, ran to hug Carrie, who patted her head and soothed her young charge's fear.

“No chile, I aint goin nowhere. Don't you worry bout a thing. I'm gointa stay right here with you. I've made enough mistakes in my life awready. That's why I came to St. Louis, to find someplace clear of my past with all those mistakes.”

“You made a mistake, Carrie?”

“Yeah,” Carrie answered, turning back to the stove filled with pots justa bubbling. “Not just one, either.”

Charlie came in the door in time to hear the last of Carrie's remarks. “I don't believe it.”

“Me either,” a panting Allard added.

“Well, you can take me at my word or be fandangled till the day you die, but good and perfect is not what living is about. I
know y'all wanta think the best of me, but I've been thru plenty of mess in my days. And I pray to a benevolent God that I'm reformed and moved on to a better way.”

“But Carrie, I know you didn't ever do anything that was really bad,” Betsey retorted.

Carrie reached underneath her apron to pull out some worn photographs stuffed in little plastic pockets.

“These heah are my chirren. They could tell you what was wrong with me. Evil, triflin and simple minded is what I was. I had me four husbands, each one more low down than the last. See this here was my youngest. Rather than stay with me he hightailed it for Korea. Don't know his whereabouts now. My baby. This picture's all I've got of him. Oh, heah's my daughter. She's still alive up in Chicago. She dances. That's why she don't have on too many clothes. I heah she really somethin to see, flashin by some white men, who give her flowers and whatnots to remember them by. See, look at all the white men by her side. She sent me this a few years ago. Then somethin happened and I didn't heah from her no more. But she awright, I guess.”

Betsey looked at the worn photographs, tryin to see a resemblance of Carrie in each one of them, but they all looked different. Like they weren't from the same family. Yet Carrie was oblivious to the puzzled looks on the children's faces.

“Oh, this one here in his uniform, that's my middle son. Gone and married some German woman over there and got me a grandson, or so they say.”

Carrie continued her peculiar teachings and quirks, while the children brought home tales of the ways of white folks and young love. Vida managed a thin acceptance of the
woman whose hair stood on edge like there'd been a short in the electricity somewhere.

Polishing crystal was one of Carrie's more enjoyable tasks. She liked to run her fingers long the rims and have tinklings ending as she began another. A luxurious hum to her mind. Wineglasses, cognac glasses, water glasses, liqueur glasses melodiously helping her pass the day.

Vida bided her time on the upstairs porch thinking on her Frank. How they used to play, running after each other behind the road houses near Charleston. The time Frank went all the way to Atlanta only to come back and say he'd seen some gal from the bottoms working in a house of ill repute, and that he'd prayed for her and convinced her to lead a good Christian life. Vida thought that was so admirable. It never occurred to her to ask what it was that Frank was doing in that house of ill repute in the first place. Oh, but when that music got to playing, she and Frank would get to swaying, and all that was on Vida's mind was her memories and the smell of salt air at dusk. Greer had been nice enough to put a canopy with mosquito nets over her bed, as well as finding a mauve chaise longue, which he said was good for her back. Vida counted her lace handkerchiefs, fingered her daguerreotypes, and sang love songs to her buddy who was waiting on her for sure.

It was a lovely day to do anything in the city of St. Louis. To go down by the river and look at East St. Louis where all them gaming houses and hoodlums were, or to jump on the back of a trolley and ride all the way downtown without being caught. Ordinarily Betsey would have stuffed herself with honey from the honeysuckles that grew wild all about the town, but today she didn't even see the cherry trees in full bloom nor the azaleas creeping out toward the roadway as if they were making a
flowering pavement for reigning nobility, or just for Betsey herself. She didn't see any of those things. She was hustling long the streets like a woman bout to kick ass or break somebody's arm just cause she felt like it.

Carrie heard all this door slamming and mumbling coming from the front, so she came out to see what was the matter. Miss Vida never made noise. She was too much the lady. So Carrie knew something was the matter with one of those children, but she couldn't find whoever it was. Going from room to room Carrie looked under tables, behind couches, in the closets and behind the stairs. Not a soul was present.

Yet when Carrie went on about her business, which was fixing dinner, she spied Betsey on the back stairway next to new blossoms in Vida's daffodils, just fuming and weeping all at once.

“Why Betsey, honey. Why ain't you at school? You shouldn't be home at this hour. Tell Carrie what's wrong. Did those crackers call you names or throw you out of the games cause you colored? Tell me now and we'll fix it up.”

Carrie hugged Betsey and wiped the furrows from her forehead, saying, “That's the way you get wrinkles, from letting things upset you so.”

“I'm never going back to that old school. Never. I mean that too, Carrie. They have to pay me a whole lot of money like one thousand dollars to get me to go back there.”

Then the tears began again and Carrie kept swishing them away with her callused tender fingers. Something terrible must have happened for her girl to be in such a state.

“Well, if you don't tell me what happened, it's back to that old school, as you call it, right this very minute. Do you hear me?”

Betsey took a deep breath and relaxed into Carrie's warm hug.

“How could anybody be so dumb and be a teacher, huh, Carrie?”

“Well. I don't actually think I get what you mean, chile.”

“What I mean is, why did I have to tell her that Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American?”

“Why I do believe he was a colored man and an American on top of that. You right bout that, Betsey. I could testify on that one.”

“But this teacher tried to make me think that being colored meant you couldn't write poems or books or anything. She called him an unacceptable choice. Now she did this only cause she doesn't believe that we're American. See I tried to tell them but nobody listens to me cause it's just another nigger talking out the sides of her mouth.”

With that Carrie pulled Betsey close to her bosom but firm, like just before you're going to get a whipping.

“I don't never want to hear you call yourself no nigger to anybody. What's on those white folks' minds is one thing, but you gotta honor your own self and your people. Calling yourself a nigger means you don't believe in your own self. And how you gonna make me proud of you, if you running around acting like what white folks think of the Negro is true. Naw, Betsey, there aint nothin in the world to make you a nigger, not less you honey up to them crackers and peckerwoods and let em walk all over you.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? She's the teacher, not me. And I said that being colored didn't mean that Paul Laurence Dunbar was less than a man or not American. I'm the student. She the teacher. She's supposed to be teaching me. Don't nobody pay me a cent to teach a living soul, Carrie. I bet she doesn't know who Langston Hughes is, let alone Sterling Brown or Countee Cullen.”

Carrie started wiping her hands on her apron. She was a mite quiet for her usual self. Then she said, “Humph, I don't know that I'm familiar with any of those names in particular.”

“Oh Carrie, they're poets. Mama said they are as good as Rudyard Kipling or even Shakespeare.”

“Oh I'm sure I'm not familiar with all them names.”

“Oh, Mama could tell you,” Betsey chimed, making a strawberry jelly sandwich for herself. “But it doesn't matter if you know about them or not.”

“Why don't it matter? You think it's awright for Carrie to be ignorant and let the white folks learn, huh? Why Betsey, I thought you were my best friend.”

Betsey left her sandwich and pop on the sideboard and ran over to Carrie.

“Carrie, oh Carrie, you're not ignorant, and we are best friends. I tell you everything, I swear. But Carrie, nobody ever insults you.”

Betsey stood defiant with her hands on her hips, while her little face pleaded for understanding that something dreadful had happened to her.

“Oh, so that's why you aint in school, cause somebody insulted you?”

Betsey turned her back to Carrie and gathered up what was left of her strawberry sandwich.

“There's such a thing as honor, you know.”

“And you call running away being honorable, I take it. You just walked outta your class cause you were insulted.”

“I got no reason to be insulted by some po' white trash, and I didn't run. I walked out like a lady. Humph! She didn't even know who Paul Laurence Dunbar was, let alone that he was a full-blooded American.”

“Grab a towel, sit yourself down and help me with this crystal. No streaks and no smudges. Shine it up right fine, you hear me?”

“Yes, Carrie.” Betsey sat at the kitchen table glaring at the wineglasses her mother was so proud of. Not a streak. Not a smudge could be left anywhere.

Beginning the marinating of the meat for supper, Carrie murmured, “Seems to me a body with some pride could go anywhere.”

“No, you don't understand. I'm never going back.”

“Suit yourself, but mind what I told you bout these glasses. No cracks.”

Betsey took the step stool from the corner where the mops and waxing sponges were hidden from view and gently placed each glass where she imagined her mother would want them. When she'd finished, Carrie gave her a glass of milk and two oatmeal cookies she'd made that morning. Then, sort of lady to lady, or woman to woman, she began a very confidential story.

“Hummm, there's this occasion I recollect from when I was young myself. Now not as young as you are, but still young. I remember havin to straighten out some no good with a terrible mouth. I felt I couldn't leave out less I stood up for myself. Oh, a whole lotta folks was busy laughin at me. The rest of em saying I should mind and be careful. See this lil ol' heifer, she carried a knife.”

On the edge of her seat, Betsey blurted, “But Carrie, what did you do?”

“That lil ol' twich of a gal callt me out my name. Trying to say that I didn't come from a upstanding Christian God-fearing home and was a kind a evil mess.”

“But what did you do, Carrie?”

“Callt her out. I just couldn't do no less.” Carrie slugged the last of her coffee, as if the story'd ended.

“Callt her out?”

Betsey pondered what on earth could that mean. Carrie wasn't ignorant, for sure. She used all these words that Betsey'd never heard of.

“What do you mean you callt her out?”

“What I done was to pick her simple behind off the floor. Now that was the first thing I done. After I'd done all that, I put her right out, right out the door.”